Allegedly the Merri Creek Fete

Photos from the Miss Caroline Tap Dance performance at Merri Creek fete this weekend, text from Planet Anxious.

"Come to Miss Caroline's tap school!!"

My headspace, she's a not so good this week. I wish my brain could let things go, but it can't. I now have a plank of wood instead of an upper back and I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on useful stuff like getting organised for Craft Camp at Sewjourn this weekend. But I really hope getting away from it all in good company will sort me out a bit.


"It's really fun there, and she's part of your community, yay!"

I am really grateful to the people that took time to comment on the freak out post. It's good, it's good to feel supported. Even nicer has been the practical help offered by a few lovely people who've said send me your ad, send me your flyers. That kind of help is fantastic. Especially because my brain is currently squealing round in circles wondering what to do about this marketing stuff. I do see that it's a good idea to market my Point of Difference but what with the squealing brain I can't really put my finger on why people should come to my school over hers. Her school will be good, mine is also good. We're both into a fun environment, non-competitive, family friendly etc. Does the whole thing boil down to whether you prefer pink or purple? I don't really know. Also I'm trying to do up flyers but again what with the stress I just can't think straight to do them (what should they say? how should they look? what should I include, what should I leave out?) and that's on top of still feeling my way round the new-to-me software of Illustrator.


"you can step out in style"

So it's not that I think any one is wrong when they tell me to sell myself -actually I think they're quite right- but I'm just finding at the moment that I can't. I'm too anxious about the whole thing. I am latching on to Molly's sage advice because it is the one that I can make sense of at the moment, which is there's probably room for both of you. I think that's right, I think there's a lot of families in this area who want their kids to dance, way more than my tiny school could cater for. Really I've just got to put any old flyer out into the ether so that when the families initially look at a dance class, mine is one of the options.


"don't pick another tap school!"

However, there is another issue that is fueling the brain-melt, because I feel that actively marketing herself directly in the suburb where she knows I'm based was maybe stepping over a friendship boundary and that side of it is making me feel rotten. Finding her in our schoolyard was really not nice. You know? That's kind of my patch. I assume that she just hadn't thought it through, that she was just in good businesswoman marketing overdrive and was covering every base, and her brain was too full to consider details such as moi. Well I'm trying to tell myself that anyway. Because I absolutely don't want to get into any argy-bargy over this, I would prefer to stay friends; I like her and as far as I know she likes me. We went to each other's 40ths, for heaven's sake. And we go back a long way. She rang me a lot for sympathy and advice when she was having troubles with another tap person. So I don't want to end up in a situation where we could never be in the same room together ever. I'm officially too old to get into bitch-fights with someone anyway, especially as I know that short-term relief in making a fuss will lead to long-term angst and I have quite enough long term angst to be going on with. If there was a way of saying good luck with your school but can you please back off in my suburb I would say it, but so often even simple requests can blow up in your face. And look, I'm not a protected species, it's not really my patch. In business terms. In friendship terms maybe it is, a little.


"or the Cherub will sneer at you"

Anyway. Sorry. I hope to stop boring on about all this really soon, but as you may have noticed it has a rather large grip on my pathetic psyche at the moment. It is kind of nice that when I've talked about it, people have been really supportive. Like I know I'm not a protected endangered heritage listed business, but actually in a lot of ways I have felt quite protected.

And PS. The Tap Kids were shining superstars at the fete this weekend and local Melbourne identity Catherine Deveny whooped our performance. She did.

PPS. Nobody but Jac made any guesses about the song lyric snippets but in case anyone was interested they are from : Grandma's Feather Bed, Woody's Round-up, Everybody Walk the Dinosaur and Get Up Offa That Thing.